Saltmere smelled of brine, tar, and rotting fish long before the town came into view. The road descended toward the sea in a series of switchbacks carved into chalk cliffs, each turn revealing more of the gray harbor below: crooked piers jutting like broken fingers, fishing boats bobbing against barnacle-crusted pilings, gulls screaming overhead in endless complaint.
Elias and Elara reached the outskirts at dusk on the third day. The town had no walls—only a haphazard line of warehouses and taverns that spilled onto the shingle beach. Lanterns swung from poles, throwing yellow light across puddles that never quite dried. Men and women in oilskins moved with the weary purpose of people who lived at the edge of the world.
Elara led them straight to the docks without hesitation. She seemed to know exactly where she was going.
"Stay close," she murmured. "Saltmere doesn't like strangers asking questions. But it likes coin even less."
They slipped between stacks of salt-crusted barrels until they reached the farthest pier. A single sloop rocked gently at its end—low-slung, black-painted, with no name on the hull. A woman in a patched captain's coat leaned against the rail, whittling something small and sharp with a curved blade.
She looked up as they approached. Her eyes—sea-green, hard—flicked from Elara to Elias and back again.
"You're late," she said.
Elara shrugged. "Church business. Took longer than expected."
The woman snorted. "Always does." She jerked her head toward the gangplank. "Get aboard. We shove off at the turn of the tide."
Elias hesitated. "Who is she?"
"Captain Mara," Elara said. "She runs pagans out when the inquisitors get too close. Owes me a favor."
They boarded without further words. The deck smelled of pitch and wet rope. Belowdecks was cramped: narrow bunks, a small galley, a single lantern swinging from a beam. Elias dropped onto the lowest bunk and felt the exhaustion of three days' hard walking crash over him like a wave.
Elara sat across from him on a crate.
"We're not staying long," she said. "Just long enough to lose any tail from Sanctum. Then we head north again. There's a ruined abbey in the cliffs—old pagan ground. Safe for a while."
Elias nodded. His mind was still back in the chapel: the black flames, the shattered altar, Lucian's unreadable face.
Before he could speak, the sloop lurched. Shouts from above—ropes being cast off, sails snapping in the wind. The boat heeled as it cleared the harbor mouth and met open water.
Almost immediately, the sea changed.
The surface, which had been merely choppy, turned restless. Dark shapes moved beneath the waves—too large for fish, too deliberate for driftwood. The boat rocked harder than the wind justified.
Captain Mara appeared at the companionway, face grim.
"Something's stirring the deep," she said. "You two feel anything?"
Elara stood. "Leviathan."
She moved to the deck without waiting for an answer. Elias followed.
The night sea was black glass under a sliver moon. But the water around the sloop boiled—not with foam, but with pressure. A low rumble rolled up from below, like stones grinding in the throat of the ocean.
Elara raised both hands. Water lifted from the surface in response—thick ropes of it, coiling around her like living serpents.
Then the first sea beast broke the surface.
It was massive: a serpent of scale and shadow, eyes like lanterns, mouth ringed with teeth the length of a man's arm. It reared, blocking the moon, and struck toward the sloop.
Screams from the crew.
Elara stepped forward.
"Leviathan," she said—not a command, but a name spoken with weary familiarity.
The beast froze mid-strike.
Its head lowered until its eyes were level with the deck. For a heartbeat nothing moved.
Then the serpent bowed—slowly, deliberately—until its massive brow touched the water in front of the bow.
The crew stared in stunned silence.
Elara's shoulders sagged. "Go back," she told it softly. "Leave the ship alone."
The beast sank without sound, vanishing into the black. The sea smoothed. The boat steadied.
Captain Mara gripped the rail so hard her knuckles whitened. "What in the hells was that?"
Elara turned away. "My passenger. He listens when he wants to."
Elias stared at the spot where the serpent had disappeared.
Inside his head, Abaddon spoke—calm, almost pleased.
Did you see?
Elias whispered back, "See what?"
The bow. The submission. Leviathan did not hesitate. He felt me through you and knelt without question.
Elias's stomach turned. "Why?"
Because I am eldest. Because I was made to end what others began. Because the primordials remember who ruled the dark before light ever touched it.
Elias gripped the rail. "And the others? The ones you said were out there?"
They will come. They will kneel. They will fight at my side when the time arrives.
Elias looked at Elara. She stood at the stern now, staring at the receding shore, face unreadable.
"She doesn't know," he said aloud.
She suspects, Abaddon replied. But knowing would break her. Better she thinks it loyalty. Better she thinks she still has some control.
Elias closed his eyes. The salt wind stung.
He felt very small on this vast, dark water.
And very far from anything that had ever felt like home.
Behind them, Saltmere's lanterns dwindled to pinpricks.
Ahead lay only sea and shadow.
And somewhere in that shadow, three more primordials waited—bound, obedient, hungry—for the boy who carried their king to call them home.
End of Chapter 8